People

Mori Reithmayr

Research Topic:

Community before Liberation: Theorizing Gay Resistance in San Francisco, 1953-1969
AFFILIATION
Political Theory Network
College
New College
Course
DPhil Politics
supervisor

I’m a DPhil student in Political Theory. My DPhil thesis Community before Liberation: Theorizing Gay Resistance in San Francisco, 1953-1969 is located within the tradition of queer intellectual history. It retraces the early history of the idea of a gay ‘community’ in 1950s and 1960s San Francisco, its origin as a radical political project fighting antigay policing, and its gradual, conservative co-optation over the course of the decade by white, middle and upper class, gender conforming gay men. Informed by this historical lens, my research also approaches more abstract questions concerning the conditions in which discursive shifts can succeed and sustain their world-making potential, and how we can build communities across gender, race, class, gender identity and performance to help each other survive, resist and transform dominant political imaginaries and realities.

From 2019 to 2021, I served as a co-convenor of the Oxford Queer Research Network. I co-organised the 2020 Oxford Graduate Conference in Political Theory.

Prior to my DPhil, I completed my MPhil in Political Theory at Green Templeton College, Oxford, and my BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Warwick.